Several hundred Vermonters assembled at the Church of Bernie on Tuesday night.

The hymn books at the First Unitarian Universalist Society Meeting House where they gathered went unopened. Instead, people in the pews paged through hardback copies of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) hefty new book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In, waiting for the man himself to appear at the pulpit. It proved a fitting setting for a former presidential candidate who’s now famous for his political proselytizing.

Hosted by Phoenix Books and held in Sanders’ hometown of Burlington, the event was one of several sold-out stops on his nationwide book tour. Sanders announced his Senate campaign at the same church in 2006 and some of his most zealous fans attended Tuesday night’s sermon.

In what he billed as a major speech, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pledged Wednesday night to hold president-elect Donald Trump to some of the promises he made while also standing up to any racism, sexism and bigotry that Trump may condone.

The speech was delivered at George Washington University and streamed live online.

Sanders, who nearly snared the Democratic presidential nomination before campaigning for nominee Hillary Clinton, read a snippet from his new book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. In it, he declared, “We set the agenda for the America of tomorrow.”

His speech offered an indication of the new role the 75-year-old senator expects to play during a Trump presidency: speaking out early, often and loudly against any transgressions. Earlier Wednesday, the Senate Democratic leadership appointed Sanders to a new role — chair of outreach — that could give him a bigger stage from which to speak.

“What you will see on Capitol Hill is, many Democrats will be prepared to work with Mr. Trump if he turns out to be sincere about the promises he made during the campaign,” Sanders told the GWU crowd. “If those promises turn out to be hollow, if they were nothing more than campaign rhetoric, we will not only oppose his economic policies, we will expose that hypocrisy.”

Sanders cherry-picked all the Trump campaign promises he could support, challenging Trump to come through in standing up for the middle class and elderly, for raising the minimum wage and ending “disastrous” trade policies.

“He was saying he was going to be the champion of the middle class,” Sanders said of Trump. “We’re going to hold him accountable.”

“Mr. Trump said, unlike many Republicans — the vast majority of Republicans — he said he will not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” Sanders said. “Pay attention to see what he does.”

Trump talked about a $10-an-hour federal minimum wage, Sanders said. “We will hold him to those words,” he pledged.

Then Sanders shifted to the agendas he doesn’t want to see Trump pursue.

“We will not be involved in the expansion of bigotry, of racism, of sexism,” Sanders said, to thunderous applause. “I know I speak for millions of fellow Americans. Mr. Trump, we are not going backward in terms of bigotry. We are going to go forward in creating a nondiscriminatory society.”

Earlier Wednesday, Sanders had called on Trump to rescind the appointment of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counsel, echoing the rest of the Vermont congressional delegation and many congressional Democrats. “The president of the United States should not have a racist at his side,” Sanders said Wednesday night.

He then called on Trump to pay attention to science, not the chief executive officers of the fossil-fuel industry, when it comes to climate change. “Climate change is not a hoax,” Sanders said. “Millions of us have got to stand up and tell Mr. Trump to read a little bit about science.”

An earlier version of this story was first posted at 9:50 a.m.

When president-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, Vermont’s two U.S. senators will play new roles in the opposition.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced Wednesday morning that he will vacate his position as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in order to serve as the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Hours later, the Senate Democratic caucus named Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to a party leadership post — chair of outreach — and reappointed him ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.

Both developments were striking, but for different reasons.

Leahy has served as the top Democrat on Judiciary since 1997, when then-senator Joe Biden relinquished the role. He turned down an opportunity to chair Appropriations in December 2012 when the late Hawaiian senator Daniel Inouye’s death made him the most senior member of the Senate. The position went, instead, to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who is now retiring.

At the time, Leahy explained that with Democrats in the majority and President Barack Obama in the White House, he would be able to represent Vermonters best with the Judiciary gavel. In a statement Wednesday, the Vermont senator said that Trump’s election had changed that calculus.

Rutland Mayor Chris Louras has risked his political career on a controversial proposal to welcome 100 Syrian refugees to his long-struggling city, and spent most of the past year beating back fierce opposition and nativist rhetoric from his critics.

Despite president-elect Donald Trump's victory after a campaign in which he vowed to bar Muslim immigrants from entering America, Louras said he and his allies are proceeding apace.

Louras is coordinating with the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program and a local volunteer group, Rutland Welcomes, to prepare for the initial wave of refugees from war-torn Syria. They are expected to arrive in mid-December or January. The bulk of the refugees are expected in the spring and summer, Louras said.

"All of us are continuing as if there's been no change," Louras, a Republican-turned-independent, said. "We've got no indications that the New Americans will not be arriving. We're absolutely cognizant of the fact that things could change, but it's not impacting things [now]."

The message in Imam Islam Hassan's sermon during Friday's midday prayer at the Islamic Society of Vermont's mosque in Colchester was unequivocal.

"Do not leave your country out of fear of someone so insignificant," he told his multiethnic congregation days after Donald Trump won the presidential election. Instead, he said, turn to Allah and continue to be productive and contributing citizens.

"Brothers and sisters, this is the time we get together and excel in everything you are doing," the community leader said.

Updated at 11:48 p.m.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean announced Thursday that he hopes to reclaim the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

“The dems need organization and focus on the young,” he wrote on Twitter. “Need a fifty State strategy and tech rehab. I am in for chairman again.”

Dean served as chairman of the DNC once before — from February 2005 through January 2009 — following his 2004 bid for the presidency. During his time at the helm, he pursued a “50-state strategy” focused on rebuilding state parties in regions that had been written off as reliably Republican.

In an interview with Seven Days Thursday evening, Dean said he hoped to revive that strategy and convince young voters to become more engaged.

“They understand politics does matter. They’re in shock. They’re largely demoralized. We need to harness their energy and get them back in the saddle,” the 67-year-old said. “It’s basically going to be a youth movement.”

Key to that, he said, was to articulate “a coherent message.”

“I think we need to provide a real alternative to Donald Trump,” he said. “We can’t be Republican-lite.”

Caroline Bick, an art major from Chicago, and Hayley Wheelwright, an English major from Massachusetts, walked down College Street after class, trying to make sense of the night before. It was Wednesday afternoon, and like many of their peers, the University of Vermont seniors were stunned by Donald Trump’s victory.

“We’re just shocked and really deeply saddened and confused and kind of feel like this is the first real tragedy that we’ve been old enough to understand ...” Wheelwright said. “We were kind of too young to really grasp 9/11 and what it meant for the country, and now we’re faced with a similar situation of just feeling really lost.”

Said Bick: “I came late to my class and there were very few people there and I don’t think I’m going to make it to my next class.”

At least one professor preemptively canceled class.

Do either of them know any Trump supporters? “I saw someone on Facebook and I unfriended them,” said Wheelwright.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Tuesday became the fifth person in United States history to win an eighth six-year term in the U.S. Senate.

The Middlesex Democrat, who first won office in the post-Watergate year of 1974, defeated Pomfret Republican Scott Milne 60 to 33 percent. The AP called the race at 6:59 p.m., just a moment before polls closed in Vermont.

Around 8:20 p.m., Leahy, wife Marcelle and several of their grandchildren took to the stage of the Hilton Burlington as the Grateful Dead’s “Truckin’” played on the P.A.

“It has been a long strange trip, to quote Jerry Garcia,” the senator told a crowd of jubilant Democrats.

Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Republican Donald Trump Tuesday, but she did pick up Vermont's three Electoral College votes.

The Associated Press called Vermont for Clinton at 6:59 p.m. — just before polls closed around the state — making it the first in the nation to land in the Democrat's column.

The outcome in Vermont was never in doubt. The state has not backed a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, when then-vice president George H.W. Bush defeated Massachusetts' Democratic governor, Michael Dukakis. Though Trump narrowly won Vermont's presidential primary election in March, he never came within 25 points of Clinton in state general-election polling.

With nearly every precinct reporting early Wednesday, Clinton was leading Trump in Vermont 56.3 to 30 percent. Nearly 6.5 percent wrote in another option — many, presumably, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Libertarian Gary Johnson took 3 percent of the vote and Green Party nominee Jill Stein 2 percent.

Over the past year, a series of prominent Vermont Republicans distanced themselves from Trump, saying they would write in other candidates for president. Those included Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who would go on to win the governor's race Tuesday, lieutenant gubernatorial nominee Randy Brock, U.S. Senate nominee Scott Milne and the party's legislative leaders, Sen. Joe Benning (R-Caledonia) and Rep. Don Turner (R-Milton). On Tuesday, Scott said he'd decided in the end to cast his presidential ballot for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who came in a close second to Trump in Vermont's presidential primary.

Vermont played an outsized role in the early months of the 2016 presidential election, when home-state Sen. Sanders mounted a spirited campaign to seize the Democratic nomination from Clinton. But after Sanders endorsed Clinton in July, the state largely dropped off the presidential map.

Clinton did not once campaign in Vermont, while Trump held a single rally at Burlington's Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in January.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) broke some news Sunday afternoon as he campaigned with Vermont's Democratic ticket Sunday afternoon in Winooski.

A few minutes into his prepared remarks at Waterworks Food + Drink restaurant, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee pulled a smartphone out of his pocket and told a crowd of three dozen supporters that he had received an "extremely important" email "in the last few minutes."

"I thought you might be interested if I read it," he said, pausing as he searched his inbox for the message, which had not yet been reported on by the national news media.

The letter, which Leahy proceeded to read in full, was an update from FBI Director James Comey, who had stunned the political world a week earlier with the news that his agency had discovered new emails on a laptop owned by former congressman Anthony Weiner involving Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In his update, according to Leahy, Comey told top members of Congress that an expedited review of the new emails had found nothing requiring further law enforcement action.

"Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusion that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton," Leahy read as a rapt audience of Democrats listened closely.

Audience members let out a roar of approval.